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Friday, October 1, 2010

Does Your Server= Home Sweet Home?

Is your server.. As the saying goes-All singing all dancing?

Does server population influence where you play in your games? I was thinking it did for me, well it does but in different ways, there are pros and cons to heavy and lower pop servers. I've recently gone back to the first server I started on in EQ2. It's a lower populated server and being the person who always thinks the grass is greener on the other servers... I had to make sure it wasn't.

The last server I was playing on would be Crushbone. While it is the second most populated server (or it was last time I checked) on live, it sometimes was a bit much with drama in chat lots of people around it also had some nice guilds too. I had some nice friends there and it was a well rounded server. But I didn't feel like paying for a transfer there for my Necro so I decided to stick with Mistmoore. I still may one of these days, just not right now.

I got to thinking, which sometimes I just shouldn't do- ha! Anyhow, last night I was thinking that it was pretty dead compared to Crushbone especially the broker so I decided to check and see which servers had the highest population. Antonia Bayle and Freeport (EQ2X server) were the highest populated. AB is a RP server and if there isn't a special rule-set there, really there is no pull for me to play there. I hear the community is great though. I ended up trying out EQ2X again, this time as a subscription player.

I managed to hit level ten, get a few AA points, do some harvesting, buy a sales crate and set up on the broker with a ton of shinies and harvest mats. Before I go into more of an economic newbie look, lets talk population. The server is hopping all day and all night. People everywhere. While it was really cool at first it started to get annoying with chat sounding more so like WoW's trade chat, people clogging up the newbie areas and while bottom heavy, how many of these new players would stick to it to high end? There is a high end bunch here but it's not as thick as older servers- and that's where it counts in the end.

I was turned down for a guild because I was under level 20, which was pretty laughable considering they were spamming 1-9 chat for hours. I eventually found a nice guild that had someone who told me a bit about the server. I mainly wanted to ask some questions about the server and meet a few people. He actually paid to copy his level 90 and was so far happy, but wasn't sure it was the greatest move. I did get some information and some of the people were very nice, such as this guy, but the rest were pretty new asking oh so many questions!

So back to making money as a newbie. Selling harvest items and shinies will usually net you some income starting out. However when everyone and their brother are also newbies and starting out selling tons of the same stuff, well the prices really drop and I didn't make much at all on my twenty-eight items.I'm sure the server will balance out in the end but with it having the Freemium option it might never balance out on top with a healthy population. Who knows, only time will well.

So what did I learn in my little experiment checking through servers? I did actually play on AB a bit too, not going to bore you with this and I didn't run into many people at all. Well more isn't always better. I think if EQ2 merged some of the lower populated servers things would be pretty healthy for most of them and not over populated. I think I prefer the more quiet chat of Mistmoore, less competition for quests and not as much drama (Yes, there is drama everywhere!). My guild there always has people on, while they are higher than I, I will catch up one day!

While I'm on the topic of EQ2X- ZAM has a Sweepstakes to win a 30 day membership for EQ2X. It's pretty easy and actually a fun contest. Check it out here.

So do things like FTP servers turn you off, as a paying player? How about server population, does it have anything to do with where you play in your games? What makes your server feel like home to you?

Thanks for reading another one of my rambling posts! Safe adventures all! -kaozz